The Climb of Walpurgis Night
by Rosamei
Summary: Over a hundred years before Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Walpurgis Night was simply another magical girl preforming her witch-hunting duties. But, hardships and struggles with her mental state caused the girl known as Sachiko Tategami to stray down the path of the sorrow, transforming into the powerful witch she is today. Follow her journey, which began with one wish. Contains an OC.
1. The Reflection of Revelation

A/N: Hey there! I'm Rosamei, as you more than likely didn't pay attention to, and this is my first FanFiction for and anime that has found its way into my heart, which is _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_. I understand that there is currently, on this website, a story with a similar idea, but to that author and the watchful reader, I assure you that I did not "steal" the concept, for I thought of it while bored one dreary summer day.

Please, do enjoy the time you spend reading "The Climb of Walpurgis Night!"

* * *

The sun methodically rose above the eastern sea, surrounding itself with swirls of color and illuminating the growing town of Mitakihara. If one were to listen closely to the silence, they would hear the rustling sheets and disgruntled sighs of newly awoken people.

Minute after minute, the sun's artistic creation in the sky faded to its usual blue, and the sun rose closer to the silver gates of heaven. By the time the clocktower chimed out to signal seven 'o clock, the entire town was bustling about busily, with the children dressing for the new school year, while the adults readied themselves for yet another mundane day at their respective offices of work. But, one girl had not yet fretted over her hairstyle or confirmed that she held all the needed objects to leave.

And that particular child was Sachiko Tategami.

Sachiko sat at the desk located in the confines of her small room. In front of her lay a piece of paper with many crossed and scribbled out doodles, as well as what appeared to have once been lines of words and sentences. A purple pen with black ink was being held firmly in between her fingers. A frustrated expression lay evident upon her pale facial features, and her deep green eyes danced about the page in a nervous fashion.

Sachiko's tender hand gripped the pen tighter and tighter, until her entire body began to shake with rage. She threw the pen to the ground and slammed a heavy fist down onto the innocent cedar desk. "Dammit! Why can't I do this! Why, Why, why!" Sachiko's outburst was accompanied by small whimpers that threatened to transform into a greater show of emotion. Her eyes grew heavy with tears as pure as a child's heart.

She threw her head against the hard surface. Her curly green hair bounced along with her head, then laid itself around her upper body, creating the illusion of a small bush.

Giving up her held-in emotions, Sachiko allowed the tears to run down her face, leaving streams of glimmering water plastered wherever they passed. The teardrops landed, one by one, on her now-ruined piece of stationary. They muddied the lines, filling the paper with exactly what Sachiko was feeling in every crevice of her soul.

A heartbroken shade of black.

She truly had not one bit of a clue as to the amount of time she lay there and wept, for her mind had left her body and was wondering about aimlessly.

Even though Sachiko no longer lingered in her personal quarters, the small fan sitting nearly beside her whirled oblivious that its services were no longer appreciated. The fly that had drove Sachiko to the brink of insanity hurriedly flew between a stack of birthday cards and a rotting apple. Sachiko may have been dormantly resting her head on the cedar, but the world around her continued to move, despite her absence in it.

In a surprising change of events, Sachiko practically catapulted from her strange postion, causing the fly to become frightened of the unexpected movements and fly around hopelessly, looking for that single safe spot.

Truthfully, not even Sachiko knew what had awoken her from this zombie-like state, and never did she ever find out, but whatever shook her up to the level where she would actually stand up straight, it had to have been a realization, either one of great importance, or one of her impending doom. If asked, she would cock her head to a sideways position and smile, without another word on the subject.

The room's stale air seemed to begin its flow once again, decreasing the tempature dramatically. Those moss-like eyes had a red tint from the shedded tears and stayed wide open as goosebumps slowly formed on Sachiko's slender limbs.

"C-cold..." she mummured, with the fan's gentle hum almost masked her words entirely. Almost instinctively, Sachiko crossed her arms underneath her breast, all the while heading for her space-consuming dresser.

With a shaking arm, she outstretched her right limb in a motion that seemed like desperation. After a failed attempt to grip the dresser's circular, bronze-tinted handles, Sachiko finally succeeded in opening the short, yet wide drawer.

Something clanked against the newly opened drawer as the air that was trapped inside of the drawer filtered out, only to be filled with fresh air. The sound was harmonious with the fly's buzzing and the fan's occasional clicks, yet profound enough to catch Sachiko's undivided attention.

With an easily readable expression, Sachiko's mind was filled with pure curiosity. She slowly moved her head towards the steady noise.

Before her was a school uniform, dangling pitifully off of a metal hanger.

Sachiko slowly connected the uniform with the bits of light streaming out of her curtain's small holes. Her sight lingered there for a second, for she thought she saw a figure shrouded in shade, but eventually danced over to her plain, overlookable wall clock.

She squinted at the roman numerals and took time for the infomation she was seeing to process through her mind. This allowed the sunlight to shine on her face, revealing the trails left by the tears she would claim to have never shed. After an eternity of pondering, three numbers popped into her mind.

8:42.

Panicking, Sachiko pounced onto her uniform and rustled into it in a hurried manner. She had already proven to be a bit over an hour late to school, and on the first day no less.

Her entire wardrobe for the school year looked as if a three-year-old just learning how to dress herself hopped into Sachiko's current clothing. Her ribbon was messily tied, appearing a bit more like a rushed knot than an elegant addition to her attire. One of her stockings was higher than the other, streching it out a considerable distance.

Sachiko ran for her make-up stand and peered into the fingerprint-laden mirror. The bags that lay underneath those clouded green eyes seemed to grow more pronounced by the millisecond, and her usually beautiful light green hair was a greasy, sickly shade that matched her eyes in a horrible way.

Looking into the reflection, she felt as if she was not residing in her own body. The way her fingertips moved, her exterior features, even the dry state that her tongue was in felt foreign.

As if the solution lay in man-made creations, Sachiko's foreign fingertips reached for her vast array of beauty items.

She literally smeared layers and layers of multiple cover-up brands, eye shadow, and even mascara, onto her exhausted face. But, much to Sachiko's dismay, her features, fingertips, and her tongue still felt as if they did not belong to her, like a puppet on tight strings of steel.

Gazing once again into the mirror that now held even more fingerprints and splashes of make-up, Sachiko saw a face that appeared like a whorish woman, with her make-up being caked on and the bags remaining visible despite the millions of attempts at hiding them.

If she had not previously cried all of her emotions out, the tears would have once again left solemn trails down Sachiko's filthy skin. Instead, the emotions were released in yet another fit of rage.

"Y-you," Sachiko called out to her reflection with her hands clenched into trembling fists, "Why do you keep looking at me as if you pity me? Don't pity me. Do something about the thing you see in front of you."

The room was silent. Not even the fly dared to move a single muscle. The girl in the mirror replied with not one syllable. Sachiko never answered her own question, and she never needed to. Because she knew the answer already.

Without a sound, without a single audible breath, Sachiko took her left fist and threw it against the lifeless glass. A shattering sound broke the silence as hundreds of shards rained down upon Sachiko's wooden floor. Each one was accompinied by a small ding, like the sound of chimes on a windy afternoon.

A fourth of the glass stayed in it's original location, but these bits were coated with a new addition to their deep layer of filth. And this was the red, red blood of Sachiko Tategami.

The girl stood there, holding her bloody hand with her only other available hand. The blood seeped from the wound, dripping onto the glass-covered flooring in tiny drops.

The pain grew too great for one female teenager to handle. She ultimately collapsed onto her knees in pain, landing on a couple shards of the very mirror that had caused her this intense pain. A paring shot, if you will.

And there she sat, for what seemed like a lifetime, feeling true physical pain for the first time in her existence. Her mind might as well of shattered at that moment along with the mirror. _'Would someone come help me? No... Mother has been at work since six... Dad...? He's asleep, right? Would he wake after hearing the crash?'_ Her mind repeatedly asked the question of whether or not her father cared enough to come searching for his only daughter.

"I-If only I was brave-ave, like, like, like, Mother..." Sachiko sputtered out as she watched the blood slowly drip from her hand, joining the growing puddle underneath her hand.

Movement near her window caught her now dull eyes. The figure she had seen earlier, that's what this appeared to be. It was white, and pranced straight to Sachiko's throbbing wound.

The being cocked its head and, with a sickening smile, asked her a single question;

"Would you be willing to assist me in exchange for this thing you call 'bravery?'"

* * *

So, I hoped you enjoyed the first chapter of "The Climb of Walpurgis Night!" I worked very hard on it 0.o I hope to convey Sachiko's character very well, and as you would imagine Walpurgis Night to be like!

Let me say, I am aware that there are many different opinions on exactly who, (Or what, for that matter), Walpurgis Night is. I personally thought up the idea of her actually being a very old witch, one from the days before Mitakihara was the huge city that it is conveyed as in _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_, and that has had many years to build up her immense power.

I am very sorry that the first chapter doesn't include any witch-huntin' bad assery, but please bear with me, for I hope to describe my idea of Sachiko's first encounter with what she will one day be in the next chapter!

If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to review this chapter or PM me, if the suggestion truly is one of great mind. Constructive criticism is encouraged, but overly harsh things over silly little one-time typos is not. Please keep in mind that I am just a thirteen-year-old girl, not Kami Madoka! D:

Thank you for giving my story a chance, and I hope you continue reading until the very end.

With fresh hopes for the future,

Rosamei, June 2012


	2. A Mental Image of Hope

A/N: So, you sticked around for chapter two, eh? You have no idea how happy it makes me that you are even reading this. Thank you for processing this information though your busy minds! xD

* * *

The small being's words echoed in the quaint room, while the belief that she was hallucinating was filling Sachiko's body, down to the tip of her greasy hairs.

Sachiko refused to give in to her mind, refused to talk to her own mental image of hope. Not again would she ever feign contact with a strange creature such as this one. Replying to something that does not exist is crazy.

But then again, Sachiko may be the only person telling the truth.

The cat-like thing repeated the question, only with a bit of a louder voice. "Will you give up everything for this 'bravery?'" It took one step closer to a wound that was still gushing out a thick, red liquid at an alarming pace, reached its head out, and licked the wound.

Sachiko jumped up from her knees and into a protective stand position. The sudden movement caused the glass that had stuck itself into her knees to move, making a jolt of pain almost cause Sachiko to fall back down again.

A figment of her mind had touched her, and she felt it, no less! Had Sachiko passed out from her massive blood loss, and was now in her own personal dream world? It just made no sense. If anything, she was going delusional.

"I am not your own mental projection. I am Kyubey, I am here, and I am real." Even though she felt weak and lifeless, Sachiko's muscles tensed up quite a bit from those words. 'That, er, Kyubey thing... I had thought those... I didn't say a word.' Sachiko's mind raced in an endless circle. She just could not process the information. None of it made sense.

Snapping out of her daze, she realized that this horrible injury no longer felt relevant. She looked to her hand with widening eyes.

The wound was no longer there. Kyubey had healed it somehow.

"H-how did you do that?" Sachiko whispered in disbelief, completely forgetting her vow to never speack to her imagination. She collapsed back onto the ground, digging the glass deeper into her skin.

Kyubey's unchanging expression was peering directly into Sachiko's hardened eyes. "This is only 1/1,000,000 of my power," it said with no motion whatsoever, "I want you to become a-"

The being's sentence was cut short by the old oak door being pushed open quickly. It slammed against the wall with a loud thud, bringing Sachiko's attention to the figure in the doorway. It was her father, sleepy eyed and holding what she suspected to be a loaded pistol.

"Who the hell's in- Sachiko?" Kazuhiro Tategami announced loudly, dropping his weapon and rushing to his daughter's side. From his perspective, the wound was bloody and still open. "Didn't you leave for school hours ago? What happened?" his tone of voice was a strange mixture of fright and confusion.

Nervously, Sachiko shifted a bit in her spot. "T-those things can wait," she stammered with a glance at Kyubey, whom continued to smile away, "Uh, first, do you, um, maybe, see that?" Sachiko pointed at Kyubey and began to breath heavily. Her father's reply would either be one of shock over the strange creature, or one of worry for his only child's mental health.

Kazuhiro looked expectantly in the direction Sachiko was pointing. "What are you talking about? There's nothing there! Now get up, quick, I'm going to call an ambulance." he ran over to the phone located near Sachiko's tear-covered stationary and gave it a curious glance before grabbing the nearby telephone off of its hook.

But Sachiko noticed none of this. She didn't see her father look at her letter, grab the lime-colored phone from its dwelling, nor did she see the worried looks Kazuhiro was giving her while the phone rang. All she did was stare at Kyubey, blinking scarcely.

Her father hadn't seen this. She truly was going insane. Sure enough, Kazuhiro would alert her mother to the non-existent "thing" that Sachiko had pointed at, and she would be forced to see that man again. She would be forced to sit in that royal purple chair, and sure as hell would be sentenced she spend the rest of her school days in that room that was devoid of light, devoid of life.

Sachiko has no idea how long she and her father resided silently in the room, for she has no sense of time, but having her imaginary companion observe her every breath, her every movement, made what at most could have been five minutes feel as if they dwelled in their positions for days.

Kyubey said not one word the entire length of time, seemingly not noticing how uncomfortable Sachiko felt.

Acting like a savior, the sound of sirens rang out from outside the house. Kazuhiro ushered Sachiko off of her cold, bloody floor. At first, Sachiko attempted to walk outside on her own, but her knees still held shards of glass. By bending her legs, the glass re-positioned itself in her long limbs, causing Sachiko to, yet again, almost collapse.

Kazuhiro caught her, and, without a single sound, placed her on his back and proceeded to exit their home while Kyubey sat in its location, staring at the scene happening before it.

With the door to the back of the ambulance open, the driver and nurses had been waiting impatiently. They loaded Sachiko onto the truck and tucked her into the uncomfortable table that they refered to as a bed. They attempted to pluck the glass shards out of her flesh, but only suceedded in releasing a few with their cheap items.

Her father endured the ride with a hardened look. The nurses, both female, attempted to talk to him, but their efforts were in vain. Kazuhiro only replied with mumblings of "Uh huh," and other similar responses. Eventually, the male driver yelled at the nurses to "Leave the poor man alone and focus on the patient," and that is just what they did.

With their attention centered on her, Sachiko felt a twinge of fear. What questions would they ask her? How would she tell them that, in actuality, she was having a mental breakdown and creating false animals that carried hope on their shoulders? The innocent-looking nurses would have her committed if she answered truthfully.

Grabbing a nearby clipboard and pencil, the taller of the two began rattling off questions, such as her height and weight and other check-up-esque questions.

The shorter one butted into the other's little quiz show. "Uh, how did this happen?" she nervously asked with a face that showed she was young enough to have just graduated college.

Hesitating for a few seconds, Sachiko began to think of a reason that wasn't half-assed or unusual. "Well, uh, I had slept in, and I realized it was a school day, and then I, uh," she racked her mind, "I jumped out of bed and threw on my uniform. Uh, then I, um, started putting on make-up, but I watched a scary movie last night, and thought there was a different reflection looking at me, so I threw a, uh, bottle of water at the mirror in fright, and it, um... shattered...?"

The taller nurse seemed as fooled by her story as the newbie. "And you received these injuries when you tried to pick up the glass, right?" the tall nurse asked, smooth as a newly ironed shirt.

Without even considering denying that assumption, Sachiko quickly nodded her head. "Yeah, yeah!" she exclaimed, a look of relief finding a spot on a face, "And then, I felt something prick my legs, so I touched my leg with my hand, and I got blood all over it! See?" she shoved her left hand into the air.

"Oh, my! Let's clean off that blood!" the shorter nurse exclaimed while turning around and wetting a towel.

She stepped over to Sachiko's "bed" and started wiping off the dried blood. Sure enough, whenever her hand was spotless, there was no wound where Kyubey had licked.

Sachiko began feeling ill. Her head seemed to be functioning on its own accord, as her stomach twisted in knots that should have been impossible. Attempting to reconvince herself that Kyubey was her own mind, she began to mummer words that sounded as much like nonsense to her as it did to the unsuspecting nurses.

"K-kyubey... My mind made up the wound... so it could heal... the wound and be... hope..." Sachiko said while the heart moniters began to beep rapidly.

A string of profanities left the driver's mouth. "Oh, for Christ's sake! We're almost to the hospital. Keep 'er live!" he exclaimed while speeding up signifigantly.

All that Sachiko remembers before passing out was the gentle sway of the ambulance as it weaved through cars on the highway. She could hear the sirens blaring and the nurses panicking.

The final thing she saw before she blacked out was a familiar image, yet it was still unclear as to what it was.

It was the image that had previously snapped Sachiko out of her depressed daze.

* * *

So, uh, yeah. Looks like Sachiko's father came to the rescue after all!

I know that I promised witch huntin' bad assery, but my mind took the plot in a different direction. I am so sorry! If I could bow before everyone that was looking forward to witch hunting, I would!

But, allow me to promise you, what I would like to call the "Gurllll, you goin' insane" hospital arc will be short, so we can get back to what really matters: Killing evil stuff!

With deep apologies for not delivering my promises,

Rosamei, June 2012


End file.
